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Wednesday is here, and with it sites around the internet are going under temporary blackout to protest two pieces of legislation currently making their way through the U.S. Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect-IP Act (PIPA). Wikipedia, reddit, the Free Software Foundation, Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, imgur, Mozilla, and many others have all made major changes to their sites or shut down altogether in protest. These sites, as well as technology experts (PDF) around the world and everyone here at Slashdot, think SOPA and PIPA pose unacceptable risks to freedom of speech and the uncensored nature of the internet. The purpose of the protests is to educate people — to let them know this legislation will damage websites you use and enjoy every day, despite being unrelated to the stated purpose of both bills. So, we ask you: what can you do to stop SOPA and PIPA? You may have heard the House has shelved SOPA, and that President Obama has pledged not to pass it as-is, but the MPAA and SOPA-sponsor Lamar Smith (R-TX) are trying to brush off the protests as a stunt, and Smith has announced markup for the bill will resume in February. Meanwhile, PIPA is still present in the Senate, and it remains a threat. Read on for more about why these bills are bad news, and how to contact your representative to let them know it.

Note: This will be the last story we post today until 6pm EST in protest of SOPA.

tester dataWhy is it bad?

The Stop Online Piracy Act is H.R.3261, and the Protect-IP Act is S.968.

The intent of both pieces of legislation is to combat online piracy, giving the Attorney General and the Department of Justice power to block domain name services and demand that links be stripped from sites not involved in piracy. The problem is that the legislation, as written, is vague and overly-broad. For one thing, it classifies internet sites as "foreign" or "domestic" based entirely on their domain name. A site hosted abroad like Wikileaks.org could be classified as "domestic" because the .org TLD is registered through a U.S. authority. By defining it as "domestic," Wikileaks would then fall under the jurisdiction of U.S. laws. Other provisions are worded even more poorly: in Section 103, SOPA lays out the definition for a "foreign infringing site" as one where "the owner or operator of such Internet site is committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations punishable under [provisions relating to counterfeiting and copyright infringement]." The problematic word is facilitating, as it opens the door to condemning sites that simply link to other sites.

The most obvious implication of this is that search engines would suddenly be responsible for monitoring and policing everything they index. Google indexed its trillionth concurrent URL in 2008. Can you imagine how many people it would take to double check all of them for infringing content? But the job wouldn't end at simply looking at them — Google would have to continually monitor them. Google would also have to somehow keep track of the billions of new sites that spring up daily, many of which would be trying to avoid close scrutiny. Of course, it's an impossible task, so there would need to be automated solutions. Automation being imperfect, it would leave us with false positives. Or perhaps sites would need to be "approved" to be listed. Either way, we'd then be dealing with censorship on a massive scale, and the infringing sites themselves would continue to pop up.

But the problems don't end there; in fact, SOPA defines "Internet search engine" as a service that "searches, crawls, categorizes, or indexes information or Web sites available elsewhere on the Internet" and links to them. That's pretty much what we do here at Slashdot. It's also something the fine folks at Wikipedia and reddit do on a regular basis. The strength of all three sites is that they're heavily dependent on user-generated content. Every day at Slashdot, readers deposit hundreds and hundreds of links into our submissions bin. Thousands of comments are made daily. We have a system to surface the good content, but the chaff still exists. If we suddenly had a mandate to retroactively filter out all the links to potentially copyright-infringing sites in our database, we wouldn't have many options. We're talking about reviewing hundreds of thousands of submissions, and every comment on 117,000+ stories. And we're far from the biggest site around — imagine social networks needing to police their content, and all the privacy issues that would raise.

Small sites and new sites would be hurt, too. A website isn't a single, discrete entity that exists on its own. A new company starting up a site would have to worry about its webhost, registrar, content provider, ISP, etc. The legislation would also raise significant financial obstacles. New companies need investments, and that would be much less likely (PDF) if the company could be held liable for content uploaded by users. On top of that, if the site was unable to live up to the vague standards set by the government and the entertainment industry, they could be on the receiving end of a lawsuit, which would be expensive to fight even if they won (and such laws would never, ever be abused). It's hard to conceptualize the internet without noting its unrivaled growth, and SOPA/PIPA would surely stifle it.

This legislation hits near and dear to the hearts of many Slashdotters; if SOPA/PIPA pass, IT staff for companies small and large are going to have their hands full making sure they aren't opening themselves to legal action or government intervention. Mailing lists, used commonly and extensively among open source software projects, would be endangered. Code repositories would need be scoured for infringing content; the bill allows for the strangling of revenue sources if its anti-infringement rules aren't being met. VPN and proxy services become only questionably legal. The very nature of the open source community — as the EFF puts it, "decentralized, voluntary, international" — is not compatible with the burdens placed on internet sites by SOPA and PIPA.

What can we do?

So, what can we do about it? There are two big things: contact your representative, and spread the word. Slashdot readers, on the whole, are more technically-minded than the average internet user, so you're all in a position to share your wisdom with the less internet-savvy people in your life, and get them to contact their representative, too. Here's some useful information for doing so:

Indeed. There were several people I was talking to, today about the wikipedia outage, who wanted to know what the big deal was (one even tried to defend SOPA). My general comparison was similar to the patriot act, but instead of dismantling checks and balance within the government some tenuous terrorism issues, it's dismantling checks on certain abusive businesses over piracy (which will be only minimally mitigated, at the cost of, probably billions, to other companies and individuals).

Seriously, if you look at what the 5 media giants (Disney, GE, News Corp, Time Warner, Viacom) really want the Internet to become, it's a return to a broadcast-focused system where users can download or stream "content" helpfully provided by those same companies, but can't interact peer-to-peer.

For these kind of jerks, the idea that ordinary people can use the Internet to communicate with each other directly is considered a serious problem. For instance, they might use it to create alternate media sources that aren't tied to the same corporate advertisers as those 5 media companies. Or they might organize political protests that cause problems for these company's allies in Washington DC. Or they might spread information about ideas that these companies would rather suppress. Or they might organize workers in an industry and demand higher wages.

It's all about controlling the information and entertainment that us peons are allowed to experience and use to make decisions. And the danger extends beyond media companies - if regular people have created alternate forms of entertaining and informing each other, then they won't be bombarded with commercials, which means they won't buy the new useless kitchen gadgets and won't vote for the candidate who's picked up the most campaign cash. This ordinary-people-talking-to-each-other thing could be the force that *destroys America* (at least as the corporate and business guys see it).

A useful link [techdirt.com] [techdirt] to send to anyone defending or even ambivalent about SOPA. It's legislation designed by a lobby group to service their agenda, and damn any unforeseen consequences. If you think the RIAA and MPAA give a shit about the free speech and due process of *others* balanced against their desire to maximize profits, you've been asleep for the last twenty years.

You should explain that the big deal for Wikipedia is that if one of these bills were passed, someone (or some company) can claim one of Wikipedia's pages is infringing on said entity's copyrights and have Wikipedia temporarily taken down without presenting any actual evidence of that infringement. As Wikipedia has many pages, its content is user-generated, and the full history of each page is maintained, not only can this inadvertently be true, but it can be repeated over and over again until the people running Wikipedia either quits out of frustration or becomes irrelevant due to the continuous downtime.

You can also add that while Wikipedia may have the legal resources to fight such claims, it is firstly resources better off used to maintain and grow their services instead of fighting potentially frivilous but immediately damaging claims, and secondly that the individual blogger, personal sites, and sites run by smaller organizations will not have access to such legal resources, and will be forced to shut down indefinitely without recourse. If your acquaintance has a personal site or blog, you can point out that an infringement claim can come from anyone, especially from competitors looking to steal page views from your acquaintance's blog, or from enemies your acquaintance may have made by writing something offensive to that individual, or even (though it's a stretch) from mobs like Anonymous who may just do it for the lulz.

The only winners of this are the entities who don't have an internet presence, and don't care to.

???? Google's entire logo today is about SOPA and takes you directly to a petition to sign. The logo is on the main page, and every single search page.

Maybe we should have actually gone to google first before complaining?

Now, I agree, had they shut their service down it would have had even more effect. But having a "whole page for it" would be worthless with google, because no one goes to google to "browse google" they go to search. And every search today has the blacked-out google logo right on the page.

In either case, there's a rather stark gap between the Berne convention's "We'll agree to harmonise our laws such they respect other countries' copyrights" and the link above's judgement of "It occurred solely in the UK, it was deemed not to be a crime in the UK, but fuck it, let's extradite him anyway and the US courts can take a shot".

Do what the subject line says. Spread the word. No, you cannot influence it, but it WILL have an effect on you. A lot of the pages you ("you" being here the people you should inform, not you per se) use are hosted in the US, including Facebook, Twitter and so many other pages where you "have" a page that you WILL be fully responsible for. You think your government will not extradite you over petty crap like copyright? Think again! Richard O'Dwyer might tell you a different story.

Pages that you "own" but didn't check for years? Well, maybe you should check your guestbook again. Maybe someone posted a link that infringes on someone's copyright, and you will be held liable for it. Yes, you there in Sweden, Australia or South Africa.

But hey, let's look on the bright side, it's never been easier to get rid of a rival. Hack his page, or just fill his FB page with half the pirate bay links while he's on vacation. He'll win another one. All expenses paid.

This and so much more is in it for you, dear non-citizen of the US.

And yes, I find it highly ironic that a law like that comes from a country whose people started a revolution over having no say in the regulations and laws that affect them.

The problem with the U.S. government is that it's virtually impossible for it to get vocal when it's collective mouths are full of Corporate Kielbasa. Over the last 30 years we've had a dramatic shift of power away from the people and towards corporation. Politics has always demanded a certain level of whoring, if for nothing else, to keep both ones adversaries and ones own party at bay. However, today we have an elected body that has for all intents and purposes perfected the art of felating our corporate leaders, truth in advertising would suggest that all pictures of the legislature include knee pads. The supreme court, stuffed with neo-fascist ass hats by 30 years of neo-fascist presidents, has all but paved the way for the corporate take-over of the Federal Government. Our "Bill of Rights" hangs in tatters, while corporate leaders proudly proclaim on national television "We don't particularly like democracy, it just gets in the way." Sadly we now have the best government money can buy.

What's ridiculous is that Google only put it in small text on their homepage

That, and the giant black box over their name. Honestly, the Google link seems to be getting passed around people on Facebook like wildfire. And I'm loving it because the people I'm seeing spread it around are not my nerd friends, but the "average joes" who don't keep up on tech rights and such. Google's approach may not be as drastic as others, but it's definitely getting attention.

That's why this is a particularly good time (right now, not November) to strike back at the people who are most responsible for it [sopasponsors.com], rather than just the bills. It'll only be about one third as effective in the Senate, but for the House, every one of them needs to lose their party's nomination and not be on the ballots in November (unless they want to run as independents). This is something Democrats and Republicans can work together on, as such a cleanup would effect both of them about equally and doesn't really have any sort of partisan ideological component.

If we establish a rule that pushing this kind of nonsense can only be done by sacrificing the next election, it'll help a lot. And eventually the revolving list of supporters will all be junior reps without important committee positions to make it happen. SOPA only got as far as it did, because its top dog has so much seniority (since 1987!!?! WTF is wrong with you, TX-21?).

If you actually read their explanation page, then you'd know that yes, it was intentional that it's easy to circumvent. Allow me to quote the relevant portion of the page so you are not weighed down with the task of reading a full screen of text:

"Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?Yes. During the blackout, Wikipedia is accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. You can also view Wikipedia normally by "(go find out yourself...)", as explained on this Technical FAQ page. Our purpose here isn't to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it's okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message."

Funny, almost as many people I talked to noticed Google as noticed Wikipedia. They all had the same questions - wtf is SOAP and why do I care. I helped inform them as to what and why they cared, if they valued a useable internet, amongst other potential financial issues from SOPA.

One of our morning talk show hosts -- who's about as conservative as they come -- devoted most of his program to SOPA and PIPA this morming. As a result, a lot of people who'd never heard of it are now very annoyed and are expressing their displeasure toward their Congress Critters.:)

Heh. Heh, heh.

I'm actually feeling pretty encouraged this morning. It has been a while since I felt that way.

One of our morning talk show hosts -- who's about as conservative as they come -- devoted most of his program to SOPA and PIPA this morming. As a result, a lot of people who'd never heard of it are now very annoyed and are expressing their displeasure toward their Congress Critters.:)

Heh. Heh, heh.

I'm actually feeling pretty encouraged this morning. It has been a while since I felt that way.

I noticed that one of my two Senators' web sites is down this morning. The site of the one who has been publicly opposing PIPA (Mark Udall) is chugging along just fine, but I think the other one (Michael Bennett) has gotten hammered.:-)

Making sure that everyone knows what is happening and what is at stake is probably the most useful thing anyone can do.

But that's not (completely) what people are doing. When I see a corporation defending my rights, especially when they have a record of violating them, I have to ask why they would do that. What's in it for them? Just because they appear on the surface agree with you, doesn't mean they have the same reasons or goals as you or your interests at heart.

When you look at Google for example, you have to think of YouTube and the terabytes of copyright violations that they derive ad revenue from. You also have to think of Google Books and their attempts to violate authors rights by forcing them to opt-out if they don't want their material illegally (under current law) served up by Google.

So no, I don't think Google (for just one example) is indulging in their minor protest out of the goodness of their hearts... They're doing it out for their bottom line and for the PR it generates.

...work on ways to bypass SOPA and PIPA. Congress doesn't care that it will censor the internet, because they're the ones who will be doing the censoring. Censorship always makes perfect sense to the censors

Creating undetectable breaches of such unenforceable laws is the way out of this mess and those workarounds might just work in China too. So you'll be saving the internet and advancing human rights in China all at the same time.

I think you're partially right in that this is definitely A way to go, but as with all campaigns against an evil (percieved or otherwise) a multi-pronged approach is always best.

Lobby, raise awareness, campaign, write, make art, make jokes, converse, code. Do all these things and more.

The chances are this issue will re-surface. Even if SOPA and PIPA are killed stone dead, they're just the fruiting bodies of a root system that spreads far and wide and has much influence. That's also where we need to focus - the self-interested parties who will burn the earth so long as they have a fire with which to warm their hands. And the tame politicians who engage in mutual backscratching with these creatures.

SOPA/PIPA is a skirmish, and one which the opposing army will walk away from largely intact.

I fear that the way it will be bypassed is a return to professional piracy.

In the era when the internet was just taking off, I remember people selling CDs of software, movies, music and games. Many people could not download, or did not have a fast connection, so others stepped in, providing a service for a price. People with racks of CDs at car boot sales, or selling the under the counter, or in the pub. It cost a little, but still massivly cheaper than buying in a shop.

If it becomes difficult for the average person to pirate, then that service becomes valuable again. Piracy will not be reduced, but the middle men will start making money again.

As a musician, I'd rather people downloaded for free than were buying my music from professional pirates.

I totally believe that if you produce something you should be paid for your efforts, and that if someone steals that work and is caught doing it, that they should be punished in proportion to the crime. I don't think they should be allowed to cripple the internet trying to achieve that, though and I don't think you should be charged hundreds of thousands of dollars over a $2 piece of music.

Copyright is actually much less about getting paid, regardless of what many people seem to believe, and more about exclusivity on who else has the right to copy a work... it just so happens to be the case that the exclusivity is rather easily monetizable for content that happens to be in demand. Copyright, after all, can still apply just as strongly to things that the creator chose to make freely distributable.

I don't think you should be charged hundreds of thousands of dollars over a $2 piece of music

You appear to be under the impression that damages awarded are in some way supposed to be about the price of each copy. They are not. It is about how the unauthorized copying compromises the copyright holder's exclusivity to copy the work. And in particular, since exclusivity by definition means that nobody else is doing it, that compromise is effectively permanent The damage to this exclusivity actually affects all copyright holders, not merely the one whose copyright is infringed upon, since by violating a copyright, the incentives that the exclusivity that it offers to creators of works to utilize it in the future is weakened (since copyright is failing to do its job effectively, which is to offer its holders exclusivity on the right to decide who else may copy the work). How much value this exclusivity actually has can be an argument of considerable subjectivity, but that does not mean its value should necessarily be very little, nor should the price of any individual copy of the work be a factor in that.

I hope that you just wanted to post quickly without thinking about what you said:

I totally believe that if you produce something you should be paid...

I just produced this post, pay me.

A lot of "art" is produced with claimed values without anybody at any time offering to pay any amount at all for it. Statue goes missing with a value in the hundred thousands because that is what the "artist" claimed so that is what the value must be...

In the real world the model is very different, you get paid, so you produce something. There is a direct link between labor and pay and it is not for person doing the labor to just do the labor and claim the pay they want. A plumber does not get to claim a magic number for his work that he did without someone asking him to do it.

A lot of MPAA/RIAA problem is that artist have gotten used to being payed insane amounts for not doing very much and they want more of it. Money for every blank CD found because some might contain their content. What about where I bought their CD and made a copy of it for my own use only as a back-up? I still got to pay extra?

Saying that you must have government standing on your side for some reason and protecting your business model is ridiculous on its face, when no other businesses

Actually, every business gets government protection in various forms. I can't, for example, go and steal my competitors product and sell it as my own. If Walmart went and stole Target's stuff from their stores, that would be illegal, and for good reason. That is exactly the same protection that the content generating companies expect, and should, receive.

It should have nothing to do with "protecting against failure." Failure for the content generators would be people not buying their product. Copyright doesn't protect against that. It only does what a door-lock and the police do against thefts of physical merchandise: protect against other people profiting against your own work. Or would you honestly say the police should also not track down theft? One cannot maintain your position (that copyright should not be enforced because it is the government insuring against failure) and that the police should also enforce physical property rights of companies against thieves, yet that is what you are saying.

SOPA, however, goes beyond that. Way, way beyond that. It does help insure content generators against failure: which is why one can most certainly be pro-copyright and anti-SOPA.

Your argument is just stupid. In a free country government is the means by which we organize to protect ourselves against other people, and get other things done that make sense to do collectively. Just because you call it government doesn't make it automatically evil. Protecting property rights is an essential basic bedrock means of creating a free country in the first place.

If we didn't have government we'd have security companies with so many subscribers that they would essentially be governments, only we wouldn't be able to vote for who runs them. The last time we tried that on a large scale we called it the Middle Ages. Turns out the security companies found it amusing to constantly make war on other security companies, and kill a lot of their subscribers in the process. And they weren't big on the voluntary part of signing up. No more than government is today, of course.

I'd like to see federal and state(/provincial) governments do a LOT less, but the things that municipal governments tend to be good at still need to get done, and it makes a lot more sense to do it in a non-profit everyone-contributes kind of way than through other mechanisms.

As for copyright... it used to make sense. For a limited time, to genuinely encourage the creation of new works, it makes sense. To pass to giant corporations and be extended forever, definitely not. I really don't think Disney would stop making movies if they only had copyright on the works for 10 or 20 years. Their payback period is much less. And gaining the power to arbitrarily shut down Internet sites without due process will just break a lot of things, not stop the theft anyway. So it's all stupid.

The only value these blackouts have is in bringing SOPA and PIPA to the attention of people who otherwise wouldn't know what SOPA and PIPA are. If you're reading Slashdot, you should already know what is going on.

This morning on NPR's Marketplace Morning Report, there was a footnote similar to a few other mass media articles I've seen. They pointed out that if necessary, you could use Google's "cached copy" of a site like Wikipedia, if you are otherwise blocked by the SOPA front page. It's like a digital scab on the picket line.

Then it struck me: isn't this advice a sort of inducement to piracy, and therefore a strong statement about SOPA's odious nature? If a site blocks its own publication of data, say, Sony/EMG/WarnerBros takes down its own webpage, isn't relying on a third party copy to get that content without their authorization just another form of "stealing" in their eyes? Wikipedia content is under some copyleft premise, but I don't think that changes the point: there are times that everyday reasonable activities can be construed as piracy in ways that a law or a technology can never adequately distinguish.

If you live outside the United States, contact your State Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs or similar branch of government. Tell them you oppose SOPA and PIPA, and want the internet to remain open and free.
The decision for a global blackout was made in view of concerns about similar legislation in other nations.

Why is it that in every story about this, someone feels the need to question why/. isn't shutting down? These blackouts, in and of themselves, will not stop SOPA/PIPA. The purpose is to raise awareness and mobilize people who would otherwise be unaware or apathetic to the cause./. readers are already well aware and united in their opposition, and frankly, stories such as this on the front page will so more good than a simple blackout to that audience. The blackout of Wikipedia, on the other hand, reaches a vastly wider audience, including millions who have never even heard of this legislation. The inconvenience of not having access to one of their most useful sites will hopefully serve as a wake-up call to these people and spark action from a much larger base. Think for a moment about why one size doesn't fit all when it comes to how sites can best raise awareness of the issue.

God knows, I don't know how many times a sales guy, or some piece of legislation, proposed something that would have been awesome in theory but that was just totally unmanageable in practice. On more than a few occasions I have seen these features go into production over my protests, only to see them die a rapid death when management realized how much time it was taking to keep them up.

Having said that, I'm also an author and copyright owner and my book can be found on multiple pirate and other sites around the Internet. I would love the ability to press a button or fill out a form and have the link removed from every index.

To be honest, I don't know how many sales this is costing me, but not knowing isn't a particularly comfortable feeling. Maybe the big boys can just blow off a certain amount of piracy, but I'm still very small and every sale, or lost sale, makes a difference.

I guess I'd be more comfortable with/less bothered by this if I had a story that I could point to where a sale was driven by a download of pirated copy, but I don't have one yet (which of course doesn't mean it hasn't happened).

I also think this may work better for authors with multiple works; they hook people with pirated copies and then make their money by selling them their new stuff. Many people seem to do this on the Apple eBook store. Of course, that could make an argument for breaking books up into smaller pieces (e.g. turn a three-section book into three separate books) so that this approach can be used.

The runner up story is Susan Boyle. When Wikipedia comes off blackout, go look her up and check the sales records - some such highest selling new artist in X years.

But let's do your story.

If you're gutsy, you'll post a link to your book and dedicate it "A gift to protest SOPA". Pick a CC license, I suggest "Attribution Only" (So that people can't replace your name, but all told, people are usually pretty good at keeping original artist names on their copies.) Put a rider in "Since this copy originated on a special post, please let me know if this copy inspires you to buy it". Give us an address to send checks/payments to, etc.

Or, if you are still a little squeamish, send *me* all that info which I won't re-share, but I'll report my results. My email is "not obfuscated" so send it along!

Update: The gentleman did in fact email me a copy, so now it's my turn to decide what happens next.

A couple of notes:

A Legit issue underneath all the snow-job the **AA is churning out is that there is indeed a longer gestation period for "non-traditional sales" so on purpose I "won't pay today". (Otherwise that's just more of an inverted retail transaction.)

Also this situation is different because "the clock starts today" whereas the poster's point was that he couldn't figure out the "correlation - causation" link between unknown downloads vs. sales.

This feels like an important project for me and my stance on copyright, so everyone, watch for further posts later in other threads and we'll see where it all goes. Mr. Author, please pay extra care not to "get impatient" here. I have some ideas but the time passing is in fact part of the point, so that it doesn't just become astroturfing.

The real question is, how many sales does piracy cost you compared to how many sales it gains you by spreading awareness of your existence?

I'm sure you're smart enough not to make the "pirated copy = lost sale" mistake, so think about it in this context; I typically "pirate" two classes of books, those which I already own as a physical copy and those which aren't available officially as a digital copy & that I need in that format for them to be practical (typically reference books). In neither case are there any lost sales involved - I won't re-buy books I already own on principle and there's no point in buying reference books that are never going to be used because they're too bulky to carry around with me - so even if you were able to magically take down all the links to pirated copies of them, it still wouldn't result in any additional sales. The same argument can be made for people who pirate because they genuinely can't afford to buy and people who pirate because they download *everything* they can get their hands on and then never look at it.

Ultimately, the only group who are causing losses are those who pirate because they don't want to pay for something, which I have no doubt is a fair number, but even then, while this is obviously a huge problem for the people whose works are being pirated, it still doesn't impact the economy in the way that the MPAA/RIAA always claim because oddly enough, the money they're not spending on movies, games, books and music gets spent on other things instead.

So, from what I can see of your book, it's Unavilable on Amazon and only available as a DRM'd PDF from your website in terms of digital formats; I don't trust Paypal as far as I can throw them, which means I can't buy a copy direct from you, so even if I wanted to I couldn't buy your book in a way that's convenient to me. That's when people get frustrated and think "sod it, I'll just download the damn thing" (For the record, that's not what I'm going to do).

The real question is, how many sales does piracy cost you compared to how many sales it gains you by spreading awareness of your existence?

That is the real question for copyright holders to rationally support SOPA, and I agree with your implication that it may be shaky ground. Rational societal support of SOPA is even more conservative than that.

Society's balancing point is at delta copyright profit versus total cost of copyright enforcement. Your formula above, lost sales versus gained sales, is one of the factors in calculating delta profit. If that value is positive, copyright holders would support SOPA. But that is not enough for society to benefit from SOPA. For society to support it, delta profit must exceed total cost of enforcement. (if you are a pure economist -- libertarians would require still more justification for government enforcement) (authoritarians might require less, but authoritarians have no just standing in This Grand Experiment)

That is how it is with all legislation and enforcement. If the cost of jaywalking is not very high at a particular intersection (very few car versus pedestrian incidents), you don't have to enforce the law too strictly. If a particular stretch of highway out in the desert is sufficiently desolate, you don't have to invest as much in enforcing the speed limit. Heck, we even have limits on murder enforcement -- if we didn't, there would be no such thing as a cold case file.

We are acting as though we cannot stop writing more copyright law until infringement ceases to exist. As you rightly point out, this is not necessarily in the rational interests of the protected class. And beyond that is the rational interests of society, which are far more conservative regarding copyright enforcement.

Considered in this coldly rational light, it is hard to think that we are anywhere but far beyond the rational societal balancing point of copyright grants and enforcement.

I listened to a clip of senate hearings on NPR this morning. After a stream of warnings by PIPA opponents, Patrick Leahy (D) said something to the effect of "If this bill is as bad as you say, it won't get five votes. If it protects content providers from piracy, it will pass easily."

Way to ignore the point. He is admitting the rest of the country can burn as long as content industries are happy. That is the definition of special interest control.

The irony being that SOPA/PIPA *doesn't* protect content providers from piracy any more than the DMCA did, DRM does or any other failed attempts to legislate their way out of this mess have done.

Ultimately, there is no technical or legal measure that will prevent piracy. The *only* way you will stop piracy from being a problem is to make it a more attractive proposition to buy a legitimate copy than to download a pirated one which requires Speed (Don't make me wait 6 weeks after the DVD is released to download the movie), Flexibility (Give me the option of several formats and let me move between platforms, don't time limit it), Choice (Old stuff, obscure stuff - it barely costs anything extra to have it available as well as the brand new shiny things) & Sensible Pricing (*LESS* than the physical copy).

That when the radio was talking about companies like Facebook, Google, and Wikipedia protesting legislation put to Congress by the Motion Picture Industry that there is nothing that I can do. US government isn't much about people anymore. I have no clue how SOPA got this far.

The only actual power you have is your vote. However your senator and U.S. representative (and president, or presidential wannabe) need your vote. Do not forget this: money in politics is only a means to secure your vote, and your vote is what decides elections. So what you can do is write to your elected representative and/or opposition candidate(s). Tell them that your support is contingent on their promotion of Internet freedom. If enough people say that, succinctly, they will listen. If you can get ten or fifty or a hundred friends who live in the same district to sign the letter, so much the better.

SOPA and PIPA got this far because their supporters were rushing them through hoping they could pass before opposition against them coalesced. US senators and representatives are rethinking their support for PIPA and SOPA because they're getting flooded by emails and phone calls from their constituents who are opposed these pieces of legislation. Money certainly does speak loudly, but politicians do listen to their constituents if enough of them send a strongly worded messages of support or opposition on an important issue. Don't be so defeatist. Let your representatives know how you feel on issues and vote. It doesn't always make a difference, but you'd be surprised at how often it does.

I am posting the links to the comments here, because they apply to each and every situation and you can follow those threads if you are wondering as to how/. crowd responds to the idea, and it's not favourable here.

The reason why/. crowd doesn't like the idea of abolishing copyrights and patents is due to high degree of hypocrisy. How many people want to see government picking up the bills for other types of failing businesses, like stores, manufacturers, miners, medical clinics, transport companies, telecoms, banks, insurance, etc.etc.?

The point is that copyrights and patents are standing on the way of innovation and invention and economic progress rather than helping it in any way.

In one of the threads I mentioned the case of Louis C.K. - he didn't need the copyright laws to protect him from anything, he is not going after people downloading his show for free, but he is offering to download his show from his site for $5 a pop and he made over million bucks by now. In that thread [slashdot.org] people argued that copyright still applies to Louis C.K. work, but they missed the point - he specifically offered a non-DRMed version and he said that he understood that people would be sharing his show on torrents and download sites, and it didn't bother him, it was a business risk he was willing to take.

Just like a new restaurant owner takes a business risk of opening his business in some specific location, sinking his capital into it (or borrowed capital) and risking losing the investment and time it took to build up that investment capital. Same thing with somebody writing a book or a play or a song or a shooting a movie or a show or painting a picture, whatever, it takes time to build up capital to open a restaurant, it takes time to write a book, it takes time (money) to make a show.

It does not matter to the market how you do it - you shouldn't be protected from failure in the market by government, nobody should be protected that way, it distorts the market, and just like with protections of money (default on gold promise in 1971), protection of mortgages (insurance by FHA, F&F,) FDIC, any type of protection by government, it all turns sour and goes bad and hurts the economy.

The only correct way is to let the market function, those who can rely on trade secrets should do so, but this encourages competition if there is no government protection against failure.

If Louis C.K. sucked and his shows weren't popular, he would have lost his investment. SO WHAT? Instead he proved that his shows are worth paying $5 for even with many people downloading the shows for free he still made enough money to continue working that way. His business model is sound, the people who believe their business model must be protected by government regulations are wrong and the government shouldn't be serving any company. Government for the people, by the people, of the people, right?

So it's hight of hypocrisy to be PRO-copyright and PRO-patent while complaining about bank bailouts also with public money! After all, the copyright police (FBI and such), that's also public money. The prison system where people can go for violation of copyright also is public money.

Many don't see the problem with their hypocrisy, but they also do not want SOPA and PIPA.

Well you can't have copyrights and patents and NOT have SOPA and PIPA eventually.

Take SOPA/PIPA seriously. By that I mean if YOU, or a company is going to protest, then do more than have a small link at the bottom of your screen (like Google). Or do absolutely NOTHING, like Slashdot. Yes I know the majority of people who read Slashdot are aware of the issues, but to anybody who pays attention it looks as if (companies like) Slashdot don't care; because they don't even have a banner add voicing their opposition to aggressive Internet police states. I read Slashdot everyday and I haven't heard anything from Management about any opposition.

The power here lies not with businesses, but with the individual (i.e. People Power); if religious fanatics can get companies to stop advertising the reality TV show All American Muslim, then certainly the majority of normal people can get companies to stop supporting Internet censorship and an Internet police state.

People need to take this seriously. People usually panic after it is already too late. As a recent example; the crew of the Italian cruise liner that sank only told people to abandon ship after about an hour after it started sinking and after the ship already started to keel over. Of course I could point out Nazi Germany; most people didn't complain because most people weren't effected until the allies started bombing residential neighborhoods in Berlin. Sometimes it takes a kick in the ass to get people to realize that their government's policies are evil.

Ordinary people need to email their friends and families about this issue, and they need to include links to their representatives telling them to oppose these overwhelmingly evil measures. They need to use Facebook, instant messaging and anything else to communicate the urgency of the issue. Also as important people need to remind the public NOT TO BELIEVE WHAT GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY ARE SAYING. This is important. People are continually told that repressive measures are only for the good of the country. This is a lie and people need to be exposed to the fact that they are being lied to.

People need to be told that this is NOT a copyright issue, but an excuse where governments and large corporations can have unprecedented control over YOUR communications. They need to be told that this measure is used to enforce corporate power and greed, and that ordinary artists, like usual will not be the benefactors of "copyright" enforcement, but only the people who actually own and control the copyrights (which is usually a corporate entity) will benefit. These measures will further erode copyright by giving the companies with access to lawyers and politicians an unfair advantage over smaller companies and the consumer. They need to be told not to believe Rupert Murdock because he is not trustworthy. They need to be told not to believe Sony because they are not trustworthy. They need to be told not to believe the Big Lie that congress is being paid big money to support:

Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian on CNBC: "Why is it that when Republicans and Democrats need to solve the budget and the deficit, there's deadlock, but when Hollywood lobbyists pay them $94 million dollars to write legislation, people from both sides of the aisle line up to co-sponsor it?"

Proponents of SOPA have a 10-word sound byte saying why SOPA is "great:" "this bill will stop online piracy." What we need is a 10-word statement of why the whole idea of SOPA, PIPA, and the like is disastrous. How about:

No. SOPA and PIPA authorize the Department of Justice to issue court orders. There is no hearing until after the orders have been executed, and no recourse until the entire website is already removed from the internet. The process is entirely administrative - the first notice a site owner receives is the letter they get after their site is gone.

So, unless you're lucky, you're now fighting a big media company in Federal Court with your source of funds (your website) shut down. This isn't tenable for the vast majority of site owners.

Last week my congresscritter held a public information session, which I attended. He is hard-core Tea Party. During the q&a I told him that SOPA was a mistake and should be stopped. He seemed to appreciate the problems with SOPA and gave a very similar reply to the one from the White House.

I think is is important that more people visibly communicate with their representatives that they are opposed to such laws, and that the people are closely watching Congress.

The really sad part was the reaction of the majority of the audience, average age estimated in the 60's. They either had no clue at all, or felt it was a good thing that the government was controlling the internet.

An elderly gentleman accosted me afterwards and said that he had been "hacked" and that if I were ever hacked I would support the government clamping down in the internet. I tried to explain SOPA to him, but it was a lost cause.

It's easy to end an e-mail letter, but those aren't as effective as a personally written letter. In order of effectiveness, petitions are the lowest, followed by e-mail form letters, followed by personally written e-mails, followed by mailed form letters, followed by phone calls, followed by personally written mailed letters. Personally visiting your Congressman's office is also highly effective (this is probably less possible with your Senator, unless you live in a small population state, but Representatives often have offices that the public can easily visit and offer feedback). The most effective thing to do, if you don't have a lot of money (large cash donations are VERY effective), is to become a volunteer (assuming your Rep is someone that you can get behind on most issues and you'd like to see reelected) and get plugged in. It's not as difficult as you'd think. Once your Rep knows you by name, and potentially respects your opinion, you can slip some info in about tech issues from time to time. Of course, this does take a lot of effort and time commitment, which is why most people won't be doing it - but if you've got the time, and want to make a difference, it's definitely something you can do.

I am an advocate of copyright. I feel it is a very effective mechanism for channeling revenue to those who advance science and the useful arts.

We have overstepped the bounds of cost effective copyright grants and enforcement. We have exceeded the efficient level of enforcement, and I suspect we have exceeded the efficient level of revenue channeling. We have passed more copyright legislation in the past fifteen years than at any other time in our history. More than during the advent of the printing press, the radio, the cassette tape, or any other disruptive technology. We are not balancing the potential value of new technology against the perceived cost of adapting copyright to the new reality. Moreover, the legislation is not working. It is not significantly inhibiting copyright, but it is harming the progress of new business models and entrepreneurship. It is not rational to pass ever more extreme legislation when what has gone before is not working.

We are channeling a lot of revenue into copyright holders, and that money is coming back in lobbying. That cycle is self-catalyzing, and it has gone beyond what is cost effective. It is harming our ability to compete in the global marketplace, and is a cycle that is hostile to our national economic interests.

It is time to demand a moratorium on new copyright law, coupled with a serious research effort on the cost effectiveness of copyright enforcement. That research should have the explicit objective of answering the question: "How much can we reduce government interference in the market while still advancing the progress of science and the useful arts?"

Failure to do so should be seen as an act of aggression against our economy by those who are benefiting from this government fiat monopoly, and should be met with total opposition.

I am an advocate of copyright. I feel it is a very effective mechanism for channeling revenue to those who advance science and the useful arts.

At least when it comes to science, this statement is a fucking lie. Me and my colleagues in science, have no love for copyrights, because it is *always* a gun pointed against our work. It is a means for private journals to make money, nothing else. Most scientists would love for the results of their scientific research to reach as wide an audience as possible, and see copyrights as the main obstacle in that.

Even those scientists that don't look at science quite so altruistically, hate copyrights because it makes citing other works a total pain in the arse (try writing a document review or a textbook, and see how much you enjoy filling those forms asking for permissions from each copyrights holder, for each picture you would like to include in your book or document review).

Sorry, maybe this is too long and confusing. In brief, scientists view on the issue is FUCK COPYRIGHTS, WITH A RAKE!

The bills are massively unpopular on the internet but we are still losing the spin war on this. The blackouts are being covered on main stream media in droves (a good thing!), but every MSM reference that i have seen describes the bills as the 'anti-piracy' SOPA/PIPA bills. Lots of people, even many of us on this site, might support bills that are just anti-piracy... in the head of many, anti-piracy is a good thing.

We can lose hearts and minds if these bills are seen as anti-piracy. Get the word out that we don't object to these bills because they are anti-piracy, we object to these bills because they are anti-internet!

The internet breaks with these bills. Great firewall of America type broken. That is what we are against! Go spread the word.

The bills are massively unpopular on the internet but we are still losing the spin war on this. The blackouts are being covered on main stream media in droves (a good thing!), but every MSM reference that i have seen describes the bills as the 'anti-piracy' SOPA/PIPA bills.

We can't win in the mainstream media: they are the enemy. Not in some figurative or symbolic sense, but quite literally. Those behind the bills own the mainstream media.

We also probably can't do anything about SOPA/PIPA. They're going to pass them, by hook or by crook. We can protest all we want, black out web pages, complain to representatives, what have you. Doesn't matter. The other side has more power (being the mainstream media); that's all there is to it.

The only thing you can do against the likes of these laws that harm the public in order to cater to short-term special interests is to ensure that your elective representatives answer to you and only you (plural), so you could easily kick them out of office AND INTO PRISON when they begin to contemplate such shenanigans.

To achieve that you have to first vote out all the D's and the R's and replace them with people that are willing to criminalize corruption to an extent that will make premeditated murder look like jaywalking in comparison, revoke corporate personhood, make corporate executives personally responsible for the actions of the respective corporations and in general restore sanity to all branches of government.

As others have said, there is one major presidential candidate who is against SOPA: Ron Paul. I don't personally support Mr. Paul because of unrelated issues, but it's a fact he is opposed to SOPA, to the point of joining the blackout [dailypaul.com].

Slightly off-topic but if you are asking "what can I do" and you want to get at the root cause, not the symptom, you might want to check out the Move to Amend [movetoamend.org].

While we're on the general topic, I'd like to remind folks about another bill being considered, the Research Works Act [loc.gov]. Previously covered on Slashdot here [slashdot.org], the act is being pushed by the journal industry, and would reverse the current requirement that papers resulting from federally funded research be freely available to the public.

The Declaration of Independence expresses a feedback loop "Of the People, By the People, For the People". The founders recognized it is the people right and DUTY to keep their government in check. But they also foresaw the probability of government to deteriorate and fail the people. And they provided the people with instructions to follow in doing their duty as U.S. Citizens, to put off the current government and replace it with governance that will follow the feedback loop the founders intended.

For this feedback loop to work, the people need information about what their government is doing. Bradley Manning showed intent to make such information available to the people. Wikileaks made similar information available to the people and the Occupy movement is providing the government with feedback from the people.

There is plenty evidence the government is violating the founders intended feedback loop. When any system requiring a feedback loop for verification on staying on course, fails... lost and in this case its clear skerd happens.

The government lives in its own world, has its own laws, even Washington DC is separated from the Union, its own country more or less (like Vatican City, separate from Italy, and London separate from England). The Government has its own benefits, retirement, medical, etc...all different than The People that are supposed to be a part "Of the People, By the People, For the People".

Addiction and what the addicted will do in denial and to maintain their addiction, and regarding the government, military command is certainly included.

So yeah, military tactic of constraining free communication of the enemy......they have been identifying as "The People."

The Founders of the United States gave us, the people, instructions to follow in doing our duty. See the Declaration of Independence for it.

Sen. Chuck Schumer's phone line is jammed. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's phone line is jammed, and her contact page is offline. On her Facebook page, the line of comments on the issue is endless and they're 100% opposed to PIPA/SOPA.

As somebody that's watched this country go off the rails the last 30 years in a row, though, in my heart I think the American people need to send a much stronger message to DC, like by burning that town to the ground and salting the earth afterward.

Round up some web billionaires and get them to lobby the hell out of congress. If you can't get the money out of politics then use money as a weapon the same way Hollywood and the Music Industry does. "Going Dark" is insufferably silly because it gives ordinary anonymous slackers the impression they are doing something while in fact it accomplishes nothing. You'd be better off selling ribbon magnets.

I bet most of the reps taking point on cramming this down our throats already have their campaign contributions safely tucked away in their bank accounts, along with cushy jobs waiting for them in the private sector.

You don't make contributions when you want something done, it looks like bribery. You make your contributions when they are running for office. Then they look up who gave them money on sites like Open Secrets, and pay attention to those donors.

You don't just send a check to the politician. Everyone who complains about money in politics seems to not get this, or have a completely wrong understanding of how it works. You supported them in the past, and they do not want to lose support, so they go with the big money. A politician is not for sale on particular issues, he is for sale to the highest bidder. Then the highest bidder tells him what to do on the issues.

If you want to take a step back and say maybe they are only partly corrupt, then the lobbyist who represents big money gets to spend time educating the Congress Critter, while the opposition gets a handshake and a nod and a form letter.

The game has rules, if you want to play you have to understand them. "Send money with your letter" is not helpful advice unless you just want a population too jaded to even bother voting or contacting their Representative Rodent or Senatorial Snake.

This seems to work better for local politicians than for national level ones but with enough people writing and calling it would probably still work.

This is why most of the power in the US is supposed to reside with the states and not the Feds.

Your state and local governments are the people that are more sensitive and responsive to the needs of you and your fellow state citizens.

Think of it on a broader scale...what is good for someone in CA is not necessarily in the best interests of those living in LA. The geographic differences alone merit a great deal of that, not to mention culture.....seen many drive through daquiri shops or cities without open container laws in San Diego lately? Plenty of them to be seen in New Orleans. Different needs and wants of the people in different states.

Why is slashdot ignoring the blackout?
With so many links to questionable content, this illegal news source seems like a hive of crime.

Get it right, it's not "a hive of crime," it's "a wretched hive of scum and villany."

A filthy hole in the wall frequented by anarchists, atheists, hackers, and Microsoft haters who would like nothing more than to bring about the fall of democracy and ruin denobug's slashdot experience.

The point of the blackout seems to be to raise awareness. Since it's quite likely most/. readers will be aware of SOPA and PIPA (if only because there have been so many articles about them already, there is very little awareness to gain by having a blackout.

It's up to the owners of each site to make their own decisions on how to support it. It could be a simple warning. Google chose to censor their logo and link to an information page. We chose to replace the site with a warning, and are carrying stories and links related to SOPA. Some may consider us "not blacked out", but as we've censored almost 9 years worth of articles, we are "blacked out".

Many sites need to support their users, and can't simply shut down. Unfortunately, if SOPA does become law, their users will find out the hard way that the blackout can become a reality.

I know you're trolling, but for the sake of anyone else asking: who is Slashdot going to clue in? We've all been hearing about it for months, we know it's bad and (more or less) why, and we're not going to enlighten the trolls or the irrational authoritarian dickbags who think it's right because it's USGov doing it...

So really, why would slashdot need to black out.

I'm more curious how "The Escapist" is going to respond to the "Call to Arms" that the Extra Credits/LRR and Firefall guys put out at 3AM (EST)...

Everybody at Slashdot was in favor of a blackout to protest these pieces of legislation. That said, we're part of a publicly-traded company, and we don't just get to shut down the site when we want to.

We did, however, get full support for these anti-SOPA/PIPA posts, which will be remaining at the top of the page for the day in lieu of new stories.

but I agree with the sentiment. Right now I'm waiting for my kid to finish getting ready to school, so I've got time to post to/. . After that it's off to my day job for 9 hours. Right now a lobbyist for SOPA is doing the same thing, but he's going to spend 9 hours fighting for it. Oh, at the end of my 9 hour shift I'm going to study programming in hopes of getting a better job.

If I'm going to fight SOPA, PIPA or any of the other horrid things the 1% has in store for me, then I need more leisure time. That's what the rich were talking about in the 1800s when they said 'Idle hands are the devil's plaything'. That said, the 1% are working hard to make sure I don't get it. They're busing Unions, dividing Americans against one another based on race, creed & sexual orientation. They're scaring us with terrorists. They're fighting on multiple fronts, and I can't get the time to fight on one. This, folks, is why I'm a socialist in favor of 'Basic Income' (google it when wikipedia comes back up).

I guess one of the really big problems is, SOPA is just a symptom of a larger, more complex problem. Americans are big on simple answers to complex problems. That's why George Bush jr resonated so well with them. How are we suppose to fight when we don't even know there's a war going on?